3 years ago

GAC on life support

@CG please please please GAC is in need of serious help. This is the premier game mode for most players and the reason many of us play the game and it has lost its fun factor except for the very top.

IMO 3 greens very positive things came from the GAC changes from 6 months ago. 1- The change in crystal distribution from arena to GAC 2- the elimination of controlling account bloat and 3- competitive fights at the top streamed for fans to watch and/or participate in.

But the down side to the changes is MASSIVE! And the problem isn’t resolving itself over time. In fact it is getting worse. The middle and lower ends of GAC (which 95%+ of us fall into) are seeing larger and larger GP gaps. The smaller GP account is usually the account the wants a good fight and is playing to win. But I never beat an account 2-3 times my GP. Instead he loses to me. There is a difference between those two statements. If the larger account wants to play or half way knows how to play, then that account will win. But if they attack once and collect their under-placed league rewards, move up to face a bigger account and this boring vicious cycle continues. It has been 4 months since I have faced someone anywhere close to my GP. Where is the fun in that?

Now I am not one to rant for the sake of ranting so I will suggest some ideas for improvement and hope others will add their ideas for you to consider. I hope you listen to our plea as fans of SW and this game and try something. We need competition, we need fun.

Ideas to help improve GAC:

Give players that don’t want to play, but want rewards an option to opt out of GAC and give then a lesser reward package than those that participate

Put a cap on GP differentials in the lower leagues. Make it so in a league the skill rating isn’t the only determining factor. Let the 5mm accounts in a league play other 5mm accounts, 4mm accounts play 4mm accounts in that same league, so on and so forth.

Keep Kyber or maybe the top 2-3 tiers of Kyber as it is with no GP differential gaps. Let the cream rise to the top.

These are just some of my thoughts. I would love to hear ideas from the rest of the community.

Best regards
- Inquisitor CT

harvestmouse1
New Spectator
3 years ago
"AlienOverlord;c-2361539" wrote:

A possible solution now would be to give a bonus to the lower GP player, for example +10% health, protection and offense per 10% difference in their GP. A million GP difference would give more bonus at low GP (1 million vs 2 million) compared to at higher GP (8 million vs 9 million). Unfortunately, this would require some testing to get those numbers right and fair and we're the testers and nothing changes from our feedback.

Absolutely not. We have situations of 1.2 mil players legitimately beating players of 4.5 million; I'm sure there are bigger examples.

GP is a highly inaccurate way of measuring GAC competitiveness. Also you've told players that min-maxing doesn't matter anymore; then to say yeah, now it does. Gives an eventual advantage to newer accounts.

I can't think of anything worse you could do to the GAC than GP handicapping.
M0st1yHarm1ess
New Spectator
3 years ago
"Ragnarok_COTF;c-2361577" wrote:
You "making K1 once" would be irrelevant to my suggestion. But yes, there may be people bad enough at GAC that they'd be better off not participating.

K1 is just one example. It is relevant and applicable to all divisions because you said "33% win rate in whatever GAC division is deemed appropriate for their GP."

I'm not talking about actually bad players, but people who don't do better than your reward threshold (e.g. 33%), not necessarily because they are bad. It could even be that they have done so well that they are catapulted into a division they don't belong, roster wise. The point is, if there is an opt out option that comes with better rewards, they would take it for the better rewards and less work.

So that shows the fundamental flaw of any opt out scheme - it has to pay out better than the rewards for joining and doing the bare minimum, otherwise people would just not opt out. But then it has to be not so much better that people who would have otherwise participated are incentivized to just opt out. That's a tricky line to draw. And it has to be done not just once, but every time after a season, based on the latest data. Would CG want to do this? Would we trust CG to do this right? I doubt both.
NicWester
3 years ago
"Ragnarok_COTF;c-2361611" wrote:
We either give the people not participating an incentive to stay out, or they will keep ruining the fun for everyone else. That's kind of it.

In fairness, we would also need to know how often this happens and how often it doesn’t. For example, I handle problem orders at work, and it’s really easy to see 70+ problems a day and think there’s been a calamity, but when you take a step back and see that over 5000 orders had no problems that day, it’s less pressing.

We always hear a few people with outrageous mismatches each round of GAC, but how often is that and how often is everything working just fine? We don’t have that information, so we have to look at the 70+ orders and see a calamity because we can’t see the 5000 orders that indicate a system that’s broadly working.
CCyrilS
3 years ago
"LordDirt;c-2361598" wrote:
"AlienOverlord;c-2361551" wrote:
"LordDirt;c-2361545" wrote:
"AlienOverlord;c-2361539" wrote:
"LordDirt;c-2361398" wrote:
I'm at 8.8 and in K2, the more this goes on the further I will drop as I don't really care. CG keeps punishing me and making me play this game mode to stay relevant. It has had the adverse effect on what they had wished for me to do.

What part of the game do you like? If you don't want to play the main competitive part of the game, in what part of the game are you becoming irrelevant?

There has been plenty to do before GA was created. Plenty of things to do after as well.

After crystals went to GA I stopped all spending. I will slowly start to fall to the bottom of this game and it will then be the end for me.

But what is it you dislike about GAC? Did you find arena a more compelling way to get rewards? I'm just trying to understand the people who dislike GAC considering it offers the most use of our rosters that we work hard to build.

I just don't care for it. People said that SA was so repetitive but GA is like SA on crack. It is the same teams over and over again but instead of doing a battle or two a day for SA you have to do dozens. I just don't care for the game mode at all.

Isn't everything better on crack?
Disruptor92
Seasoned Rookie
3 years ago
While I appreciate your post and how nicely written it is, I just don't think your ideas would work or be fair. Matching by GP is just not a good thing as we know from the past. I do agree that the current system is not ideal, especially for smaller accounts, but I just don't see how they could fix this without breaking something else. I'm not saying there is no solution to this, but I'm just not seeing any myself (without putting a large part of the community at a disadvantage). Maybe one day someone will come up with a great solution, but for now I'm afraid this is probably the best system we can get.
M0st1yHarm1ess
New Spectator
3 years ago
"harvestmouse;c-2361368" wrote:
"PeachyPeachSWGOH;c-2361366" wrote:
Joining GAC is optional to begin with. If someone doesn't want to play but still join because they want the rewards, they would simply not opt out even if you give them the "option".

I think the OP is suggesting that an opt out is as reward beneficial as being tumour to lower divisions. It's a fair point.

I don't think GAC is on life support though!

I'm honestly having a hard time parsing that sentence.
LordDirt
New Traveler
3 years ago
They should just give crystals based on GP and be done with GA. As you grow your roster you get more crystals. GA is pretty much just something in the way of this.
LordDirt
New Traveler
3 years ago
"AlienOverlord;c-2361539" wrote:
"LordDirt;c-2361398" wrote:
I'm at 8.8 and in K2, the more this goes on the further I will drop as I don't really care. CG keeps punishing me and making me play this game mode to stay relevant. It has had the adverse effect on what they had wished for me to do.

What part of the game do you like? If you don't want to play the main competitive part of the game, in what part of the game are you becoming irrelevant?

There has been plenty to do before GA was created. Plenty of things to do after as well.

After crystals went to GA I stopped all spending. I will slowly start to fall to the bottom of this game and it will then be the end for me.
Sewpot
3 years ago
M0st1yHarm1ess
New Spectator
3 years ago
"Ragnarok_COTF;c-2361556" wrote:
I really dislike the suggestions of a handicap for larger rosters or a division floor based on GP.

My favorite suggestion I've seen in this thread is to provide an opt out option. Players who choose this can get rewards that scale to their GP and equate to 33% win rate in whatever GAC division is deemed appropriate for their GP.

People who don't want to play and opt out will get more crystals than they get now but less than if they actually participated. And they won't ruin the experience for those early- and mid-game players trying to climb the ranks.

So if I make K1 once, and my GP is enough for me to stay there, I'd be incentivized to opt out until I develop my roster to the point where I'm sure I'll do better than 33%. In fact I'd opt out until I am sure I can make it into the next reward tier, within K1, higher than 33%, otherwise it just wouldn't be worth the effort.